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Sunday, March 02, 2008

Last weekend I came up with another variation of the Cottage Cheese Muffins I found a few months ago on 101 Cookbooks. Although I do still like my regular phase one egg muffins, I'm now hooked on the slightly crunchy texture of these new muffins with eggs, cottage cheese, almond meal, and just a touch of flour. I've already posted muffins with bacon and green onions and ham and cheddar, but a friend asked me to come up with a vegetarian version that had feta cheese. These muffins combine brown crimini mushrooms with the feta for a delicious breakfast option.

There's something else new about this muffin recipe too. When my Nicole at Pinch My Salt adapted my egg muffin recipe to make her Egg-xcellent Egg Muffins, she showed them photographed in little individual silicone muffin cups. Immediately I started coveting those individual muffin cups, and recently I succumbed to temptation and bought some from Sur la Table. The cups are smaller than my silicone muffin pans, so this recipe is for twelve small muffins, but it could also be six larger ones if you have standard muffin tins. With almond meal being one of the main ingredients, these muffins are pretty nutritionally dense, and two small muffins are just right for me.

Chop crimini mushrooms into 1/4 inch pieces and saute in a bit of olive oil until the mushrooms are well browned and any liquid has evaporated.

Here's the muffins coming out of the oven in the new individual muffin cups. Don't you love those muffin cups? Best of all, the smaller cups will fit on a mini-cookie sheet that fits into my toaster oven. Life is good.

Cottage Cheese and Egg Breakfast Muffins with Mushrooms and Feta Cheese
(Makes 12 small or 6 large muffins, recipe adapted from Cottage Cheese Muffins at 101 Cookbooks, original recipe by Rose Elliot.)

Preheat oven or toasted oven to 400 F. Wash mushrooms and spin dry or dry with paper towel. Dice mushrooms into pieces about 1/4 inch. Heat olive oil in heavy frying pan, add mushrooms and saute about 5 minutes, until mushrooms are starting to brown and all liquid has evaporated.

(If you don't have silicone muffin tins, be sure your pan is sprayed well with non-stick spray or olive oil or you'll have a very hard time getting these out of the pan. You could use foil muffin cups sprayed with non-stick spray in a regular muffin pan.)

Serve hot or at room temperature. Can be stored in the refrigerator and reheated in microwave. Don't microwave more than 1-2 minutes.

South Beach Suggestions:
Because of the flour, these muffins would be suitable for phase 2 or 3 of the South Beach Diet. Be sure to use white whole wheat flour for the South Beach friendliness. The muffins do contain a significant amount of fat due to the almond meal, Parmesan cheese, and Feta cheese, so be aware of that when planning other meals for that day.

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Kalyn, how cruel of you to post those pictures--and then the recipe! They look so yummy, and just the kind of thing to eat in the morning..and for lunch..and all during the day, because they are irresistible!

Kalyn--These sound great! Savory muffins are far more interesting to me than sweet ones. The almond meal was an interesting call. As another take, what about perhaps substituting flaxseed meal for its Omega-3 fatty acids?

Terry, I've used flaxseed meal mixed with almond meal which I think would work here but I don't think I would use more than maybe 1/3 flaxseed meal to replace the almond meal. Let me know how it turns out if you try it.

Alaswhatever, I haven't tried it with regular whole wheat, but I think it would work fine. I might add a tiny pinch more baking powder (not much though.) Love to hear how they turn out with whole wheat if you try it.

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